＊ＣｈｕｎＹｕ＊

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned. 
回首看你的失敗，你得到的那些更睿智、更強烈的經驗、想法，永遠會跟著你，扎根于你的求生能力之中。你將永遠不能真正了解自己，了解你和周圍人之間關系的力量，除非你都體驗過，在一種不幸的境遇之下。這些認知，真是禮物，因為，這些都是痛過所獲，對我來說，這比任何我拿過的文憑都要來得有價值。

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes. 
給我一個時間機器或者時光隧道，我會告訴21歲的自己，個人的快樂不是建筑在資產或成就的清單上。你的文憑、簡歷，不是你的人生，雖然你可能遇到很多像我這般年紀或者更老一點的人，搞不清楚這兩者的差別。人生很難，很復雜，不受任何人的掌控，謙卑地認識到這個，會讓你在多變的逆境中挺過來。

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
你們可能認為我選擇第二個主題，想象力的重要性，緣于它在我重建自己人生的過程中占據的位置，但，不全是這樣。盡管我會為睡覺前的講故事時間辯護直到我咽氣，我意識到珍視想象力是基于一個更廣泛的層面。想象力不僅是人類獨具的能力，“看見”那些并不存在的，以及繼而產生的所有的發明、創造；在它可被證明的最據變化性和揭示性的能力之中，想象力給了我們設身處地去為同類著想的能力，我們沒有經歷他們所經歷的，但我們可以理解、同情他們。

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
寫哈利波特之前，我有過一些很了不起、對我產生非常重要影響的經歷，而這，也催生了小說中的一些內容。這來自于我早年的工作。當時20歲出頭，雖然一到午飯時間，我就溜出去寫小說，我還是要工作付房租的，工作的地方在 Amnesty International （國際特赦組織）倫敦指揮所的研究部門。

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
在那間小辦公室里，我匆匆看過一些潦草的信件，這些信件是從極權國家通過非正常管道運送出來，運送的人擔著牢獄之災的風險，為了把事情的真相告訴給外面的世界。我看過那些突然就失蹤了的人的照片，這些照片由他們絕望的親人、朋友傳到我們手中。我看過遭受迫害的人的證詞，和他們身體上傷痕的照片。我看過手寫的，有目擊者的，關于綁架和強奸案的審判、處刑的記錄。

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
我的很多工作同仁都曾是政治犯，因為他們有勇氣、膽量，有自己的想法，不受政府擺布，他們被迫離開自己的家園，被驅逐，或逃離。去我們那兒的，有去傳遞消息的，還有去探聽自己仍在那個國家的親友的狀況的。

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
我永遠無法忘記那個受迫害的非洲小伙子，當時，他不比我年長，在他的祖國，經受各種磨難后，他已經精神異常。在攝像機面前講述他所遭受的酷刑時，他止不住地發抖。他當時比我高一英尺，可是虛弱得像個小孩。之后，我被指派送他去地鐵站，這個人生已經完全被殘酷蹂躪的小伙子，極優雅地握住我的手，祝福我未來快樂。

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
只要我還活著，我就記得，那天，走在空蕩蕩的廊道里，突然聽見，從一扇緊閉的門里面，發出的一聲尖叫，那個叫聲中充滿了痛苦和恐懼，我從來沒聽過那樣的叫聲。門開了，一個同事露出頭來，叫我快點拿一杯熱飲過去給坐在她旁邊的年輕人。同事剛剛不得已告知那個年輕人，他的國家，為了報復他在外公開發表反對言論，把他的母親給處決了。

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
在我20幾歲工作時的每一天，我都被提醒著，我是多么的幸運，生長在一個民主自由，民選政府的國家，有律師、得到公開審判是每個人的權利。

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
每一天，我看到更多的邪惡的人，為了權利，迫害他們自己同胞的證據。我開始作噩夢，字面意義上的噩夢，夢見那些我看過的，聽過的，讀過的。

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
不過，在國際特赦組織，我也看到了超過我以前見識過的人類的高尚面。

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
國際特赦組織里成千上萬的人，自己并沒有經歷過因為信仰被折磨、坐牢，卻在為那些受迫害的人發聲。人類同理心的力量，引導著群體活動，去拯救生命，去救出坐牢的人。普通人，他們自己有安全、受保障的生活，聚在一起，形成一個集體的力量，去拯救那些他們從不知道的人，可能永遠也不會碰上的人。我在那個活動中小小的加入，是我這一生中最謙卑、最受到激勵的體驗之一。

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
在這個星球上，有別于其他生物，我們人類可以不需要去切身經歷，就能學習并且理解。我們可以設身處地，去思人所思，想人所想。

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
當然，這只是種能力，像我小說中虛構的魔法一樣，道德上，它是中立的。有人也可以用這種能力，去操弄、控制，就和用它去理解和同情一樣。

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
許多人情愿完全放棄發揮他們的想象力。他們選擇把自己保持在有所體驗的界限內，永遠不要找麻煩，去感受如果換成別人是什么樣子的體驗。他們可以拒絕聽到尖叫聲，或者只是在門里面偷看；他們可以對不在身邊的災難充耳不聞，視而不見；他們可以拒絕知道。

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
我可能也有點忍不住要去嫉妒那些人可以那樣活著，除了說，我不認為，他們的噩夢會比我的少。選擇生活在一個狹隘的空間，會導致一種精神病：agoraphobia（懼曠癥：對人群及開放空間感到恐懼，和另外一個 claustrophobia（幽閉恐懼癥：對狹小密閉空間感到恐懼）正好相反），而這個，會帶著它本身的恐懼。我想，那些頑固欠缺想象力的人會見到更多的魔鬼。他們通常更容易害怕。

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
此外，那些選擇不去同情別人的人可能促成了魔鬼的產生，他們沒有直接犯罪，但是卻因為冷漠而成為幫兇。

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
18歲那年，我在古典文學的廊道里穿梭到盡頭，為了尋找一些我當時不能概括的東西時，學到一句，出自于古羅馬時代的希臘作家 Plutarch（普魯塔克）：我們內在所獲得的將會改變外在的世界。

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
這是一句令人驚詫的斷言，然而在我們生命中的每一天，它都被驗證過千百回。它告訴我們，在某一方面，我們和外在世界無法逃避的聯系，僅僅因為我們的存在，就影響了其他人的人生。

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
然而，2008屆的哈佛畢業生，你們將如何更多地影響到其他人的人生呢？你們的才智，辛苦工作的能力，你們所取得的學業上的成果，給了你們獨特的位置，獨特的責任感。哪怕是你們的國籍，都把你們和一般人區分開來。你們之中的大多數，都來自于世界上唯一的超級大國。你們投票的方式，你們生活的方式，你們抗議的方式，你們對政府所施的壓力，都在國界之外發揮著影響力。這是你們的優勢，也是你們的負擔。

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
如果你們選擇用自己的地位和影響力去為那些不能發聲的人說話；如果你們選擇自己的感受不僅和那些強人同在，也和那些弱小同在；如果你們保持設身處地、為那些沒有你們那般優勢的人著想的能力，那么，將不僅僅是今天這些慶祝你畢業的父母家人為你驕傲，而且是成千上萬、因為你的幫助人生得以改善的人們。我們不需要魔法去改變世界，我們已經自帶了所有的能量：我們有能力去想像更好。

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
演講快結束了。還有一個給你們的愿望，那是我21歲時就已經有了的。畢業典禮那天坐在我身旁的朋友，成了我終生的朋友。他們是我孩子的教父教母，是我遇到困難會去求助的人，是好到我把他們名字用在“Death Eaters”上也沒有起訴我的朋友。畢業的時候，濃厚的感情，共同分享、再不會重來的歲月把我們綁在一起，當然，還有我們“以此為證”的合影：如果哪天哪個人做了總理，那可是價值不菲的寶貝。

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: 
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
所以今天，給你們最好的祝福莫過于，你們會像我一樣，擁有最珍貴的友誼。明天，我希望你們即使把我的演講忘得一干二凈，卻能記住，另一個古羅馬人的名言，當時我從職業階梯上敗退，逃到古典文學的廊道里，想尋找古老的智慧。這句話是：“人生和故事一樣：不在于它有多長，而在于它有多好。” 
祝大家都有個非常好的人生！ 
謝謝諸位。




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